Kia Tried To Build A Wagon In The 1990s And It Flopped So Hard It’s Been Almost Entirely Memory-Holed

Earlier this week, Matt included a mention of the Kia Clarus wagon in The Autopian’s TMD. That immediately sent my Weird Car Sense twitching, because I find the Clarus actually incredibly fascinating. Partially for what it is, but also what it isn’t – or what the car it was based on, wasn’t. Does this sound like I need to explain it a bit?

To put it short, the Kia Clarus station wagon, or the Credos Parktown as it was also badged in its South Korean home market, is a wagon version of a Mazda-based Kia, but it’s based on a car that wasn’t available as a wagon from Mazda.

This means Kia cooked up a wagon by itself, which also explains the blob-like design a bit. The Clarus wasn’t destined for success, even less in wagon form.

Japanese Long-Form Wagons

Mazda, like a number of Japanese manufacturers, usually kept making wagons longer than the sedans of a given generation. Wagons, for Toyota, Nissan, Honda et cetera meant an option of making a cargo version as much as a sportswagon or a family hauler, so Japanese market model ranges often included a completely bare bones version with unpainted bumpers, dinky little steel wheels, vinyl seats and sometimes a column shifter, depending on the powertrain.

For instance, Nissan offered two wagons out of the B11 generation Pulsar/Sunny/Sentra: the more rakish wagon that was sometimes sold as the California, and the more upright wagon that was also sold as the AD Van, sometimes with round headlights and zero equipment.

Mazda did this with the 323, 626 and 929. The rear-wheel-drive late ‘70s 929 was sold until the late 1980s in van form, which also meant it saw two different 929 generations introduced after its own sedan version had already gone to a farm upstate. It was also built until the 2000s in China by Haima (Hainan-Mazda).

The 1988 626 wagon was the first wagon for the 626 model range, and it also stayed in production quite long, til the end of the ’90s. The 1987-introduced GD generation was a good update for the 626, and it also brought things like four-wheel steering and four-wheel drive, and formed the basis for the Ford Probe. The wagon received the model code GV.

The wagon was sold with 4WD in some markets, likely making it a quite capable car. In Japan, this generation was sold as the Mazda Capella, with its commercial version sold as the Capella Cargo.

The Basics For The Kia Came From Mazda

The next generation of the 626, the swoopy GE version, was brought to the market in 1991-1992, and Mazda didn’t design a wagon out of it but kept selling the old 1988 introduced wagon alongside. For more space, Mazda also offered the MPV which was based on the ’80s 929.

In Japan, the new generation was sold as the Cronos, to differentiate it from the more straight-lined Capella predecessor.

Japan was living in heady times when these cars were designed, which also meant they were sold under several names in several dealerships. Mazda had a bunch of different sub-brands in those days, from Eunos to the stillborn Amati.

The 626 and its Japan-market Capella and Cronos siblings (as well as the MX-6 coupes) were accompanied by developments such as the Autozam Clef and the Ẽfini MS-6, and as well as available 4WD, they received V6 engines ranging from 1.8 litres to 2.5 litres in displacement. The Autozam Clef (above) looked as if Mazda had subcontracted the car’s design to Pontiac.

There was also a Ford-badged 626 alternative called the Telstar, like with the previous generations. It was sold in Australia as well as Japan and built in New Zealand.

Around this time, the asset bubble burst, and Mazda replaced the 1991 car with a more back-to-basics Capella model in Japan in 1994. The more serious looking CG generation car was shorter and narrower, and while it retained the same wheelbase, it’s said to be on the same platform as the smaller Lantis/323F. There was no V6 version, even if 4WD continued to be offered. It was very much an inbetweener car, sold from 1994 to 1997.

The old GV wagon still stayed, built until 1997 and 1999 in commercial form, just with a new nose again. It was available with some cool add-ons such as body kits and front bull bars, but the bodyshell and the doors show how the base car dated back to the late ’80s. It’s especially good looking in two-tone paint schemes.

In 1997, Mazda introduced a completely new Capella/626, which finally also brought a new wagon to the 626 model range after a decade. This generation, which also formed the basis for the Mazda Tribute and Ford Escape, would survive til 2002 when it was succeeded by the Mazda 6.

Kia Takes The Platform For The Parktown

What’s this got to do with Kia? Kia took the 1991 626 as the basis for its Credos, as Kias had traditionally been rebadged, badge-engineered or redesigned and repackaged Mazdas. At that point, Kia’s 626 GC-based Concord and Capital were already getting old, as the car underneath these 1987 and 1989 unveiled sedans originally went into production in 1983. Yet, the Concord and Capital would survive until the mid-1990s.

You can sort of see the 1990s swoopy 626 in the Credos’ doors and fenders, even if the sheetmetal wasn’t the same. The facelift disguised the origins more, but in the pre-facelift car, the GE generation 626 is still visible. As well as its South Korean home market, the car was exported to Europe as a cheaper alternative to established Japanese brands, as Kia started its European sales in the early 1990s. In Europe, the Credos was called the Kia Clarus, and it was initially sold as a sedan only. But Europeans do like their wagons, and Kia realized the Credos needed one too.

However, as Mazda kept making the old generation wagon forever, the GE 626/Capella didn’t have a wagon for Kia to badge and build. It also didn’t have access to the GD/GV 626, which Mazda was still happy building.

As Kia needed a wagon to complete its model range (and likely to offer a wagon that was larger than the Hyundai Elantra, as there was no Hyundai Sonata wagon), the South Korean company had to design one themselves. The Credos received all the necessary modifications: a tall roof with bars and as the photo above shows, even a tiny bull bar.

After a 1995 concept car called the Kia Vagabond was shown, the Credos wagon went on sale in mid-1997.

The Parktown Stays In Park

The end result is interesting looking. Would Mazda have created something similar out of the swoopy 626, had it needed to? Looking at the Clarus from the rear, it sort of looks like a ovoid Taurus wagon thanks to the rear side window shape, but Kia also took the liberty to fit tall and narrow tail lights up in the C-pillars, in the style of the Fiat Marea Weekend, which had been introduced a year earlier. It also looks fairly similar to the late 1990s Toyota Corolla wagon, but it’s bigger.

Korean car sites note the wagon, called Kia Parktown in its home market, sold very poorly and was only made for two years, during which time 870 units were sold in Korea. Buyers looking for passenger and cargo space simply went for Kia’s MPV offerings, the Carens and Carnival, says Car Spotting in Korea on Instagram.

A weird thing is that while the Credos sedan was available with a V6, the unit isn’t from Mazda, but is in fact the Rover KV6 from Britain: the 1.8-liter T8D engine was also used in the Kia Elan. No 4WD version was offered.

Today, the car is incredibly and increasingly rare: firstly, it never sold well, and because there was no incentive to preserve them, they have largely vanished from the roads thanks to rust. The Dutch-registered wagon mentioned in TMD is one of three in the Netherlands. Another is being sold for parts on a Dutch scrapyard website, and I can find an Estonian Clarus being dismantled in Tallinn. Another car page, Parked Car in Korea, says that anybody who recognizes the Credos Wagon qualifies as a honorary Korean at this point. It’s that niche.

It’s even difficult to find good quality press images of the car, and this video of a breakers’ yard in Lithuania shows the car decently well, as does the Wikimedia shot above taken in Italy. It’s been so long since these cars were seen parked on the street, that most Wikimedia images are very old and taken on ancient camera phones with poor resolution.

The Clarus, while being Kia’s first attempt to design a wagon of its own, is not Kia’s first wagon. That honor goes to the tiny Kia Pride Wagon, which is a long-roof, five-door version of the Ford Festiva/Mazda 121. The Ford and Mazda versions were never available as wagons unlike the Pride, but the design of the Pride Wagon is still unmistakably a stretched Festiva.

After the Clarus was phased out and the Pride Wagon ceased sales in 2000, Kia’s next wagon effort was the Rio, one of the cheapest new cars for sale in the United States in the early 2000s. It took until the fourth generation Optima for Kia to introduce a mid-size station wagon again, and that was developed with the European market in mind, instead of the United States or South Korea.

As the Festival of the Unexceptional quote in The Morning Dump goes:

In the text submitted in the Concours entry form for this Kia Clarus Wagon, the owner states that they’re almost completely forgotten, with just three estates and twelve saloons left in the Netherlands, where it’ll be making the journey from this year. Never mind “forgotten”, we didn’t realise they did an estate version of the Clarus in the first place. The other cars on the Concours lawn will have to try hard to match the Kia’s level of anonymity.

There’s probably no better epitaph for the Clarus Wagon, also known as the Kia Parktown. May it rest in peace on a quiet shelf of automotive history.

(Top image: Newspress/Hagerty)